Kabbalistic Yiddish

Aaron Zeitlin’s Mystical-Messianic Poetics

Nathan Wolski

9781933379852

386 pages

Cherub Press

Hardback $72.00

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Overview

This study presents annotated translations and analyses of Aaron Zeitlin's (1898-1973) “neo-kabbalistic” Yiddish poems written during the 1920s in Warsaw. Fusing deep zoharic knowledge with Yiddish avant-garde/modernist poetic form, Zeitlin's “cosmic poetry” represents a unique moment both in the history of Kabbalah and in the history of Yiddish literature. Metatron (a book length poem), Keter, and Yosef della Reina reveal a deep mythopoetic imagination writing at the intersection of messianism and mysticism. With a Yiddish foreword by Yitskhok Niborski.

Author Bio

Nathan Wolski is the Liberman Family Lecturer in Jewish Studies with the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation, Monash University, Australia. He is the author of A Journey into the Zohar: An Introduction to the Book of Radiance (2010), the translator of The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, Volume Ten (2016), and with Joel Hecker, The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, Volume 12 (2017). He has written numerous studies on diverse aspects of the Zohar, and translated Melila Hellner-Eshed’s book, A River Flows from Eden: The Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar (2009).